@100: "Fan, calling out attitudes is not the problem. It's doing it with a vicious energy."

By that logic and in practice, how is a rude/pointed tone a bigger problem than casual, trollish misogyny?

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Tone_argum…

@102: Part of the human experience involves being imprinted with misleading to downright terrible ideas from birth and on. Even with the best parents, it takes constant filtering to sort out whether ideological narratives, whims, short fleeting bouts or ideas are helpful and useful to you and the other humans around you. Race, gender, class, all these concepts which have to be analyzed as both very real that others believe and concepts that should be deconstructed and simultaneously understood and rejected as need be.

Good on you for being able to see what's imprinted on you and how it's shaped past behavior, and good luck to us all to get past the bad ideas to the healthiest and happiest.

I think there's a huge gulf of difference between understanding how patriarchical narratives of how men and women "should behave" to each other and moving on and the Whedonesque (in his letters to his ex wife, less so BTVS canon) blaming those narratives for behavior to avoid responsibility for actions.

I wish the best in dating and life to you, and that base consciousness will serve you in treating yourself well and others. The struggle to get past oneself and the myriad of bullshit narratives and wild expectations we have rattling around inside our heads is absolutely real no matter the person. Just keep mind as best you can. And if things don't match up, can't get your head around someone else, communication helps mend those gaps.

Forgive the obvious notes, but some could always use restatement.

@82 Woof Candy

Learning your body means alone and with partners or toys or whatever. The point is, at a certain point adult humans who wish to have fulfilling sex lives need to learn what works for them and what doesn't, so this idea that men should figure out women's bodies alone or that they should prioritize women's pleasure or that a skilled male lover is responsible for his female lover's orgasms regardless of her own experience or participation is a misunderstanding, I think, of what it means to say that men should be nice lovers who think of the woman's pleasure. What we want is more knowledge and participation and going off-script for everyone, and it's annoying when the flip side to "sex shouldn't just be a male thrusting until he has an orgasm" becomes "I try to prioritize women's pleasure over men's but it turns out women don't like nice guys".

I'll return to the rest of the thread later if I get a chance and it's still relevant as I'm going out of town for work for the next week.

@BDF

I said that I hate the phrase but that I'm also generous in realizing that men don't always mean it the way I'm interpreting it. I can tell the difference and wouldn't jump someone's shit when they are just talking about being a thoughtful or skilled lover.

But there is a kind of straight dude that you'll encounter a lot if you look for casual hookups that thinks of himself as being the most suave guy in the sack ever and that all those frustrated women just need to meet a guy that knows how to make her orgasm. Like, he can do this thing for any woman out there because he's so amazingly skilled. And you'll hear this attitude bragged about like "I always gave my ex orgasms" rather than "we had a great sex life". I think this is usually innocent but indicative a this bigger view that it's the man that is responsible for the pleasure in a relationship- a lesson that is harmful for all the same reasons that it's harmful to say that sex should follow a PIV script until the man cums. Sex is about dynamics between the two people. Experience means you know your body and can take responsibility for your own pleasure- that doesn't mean that you are always going to get off or that a selfish or unskilled partner will prevent you from getting off- there are always duds and there are always individual differences around what gets you off and what doesn't etc. But it means that you aren't waiting for someone to just bring their skills to you. You bring your openness and your generosity and your knowledge to the table too. You ask for what you want and listen to what others want, etc.

Also the "I give her orgasms" thing can be a bit rapey (though by no means am I saying that this is what most men who say that mean) and it makes me think of that transcript of Bill Cosby telling his victim that if she is going to tell people about their sex (while she was drugged) make sure she also tells them about all the orgasms he gave her. So this isn't the fault of men in general, but it's seared onto my brain and therefore when I hear a man brag about it, there's a vomit reflex, which as I said, irl I'm generous enough to know is not how it is usually intended.

Also Woof Candy,

I don't know why you'd take my statement to mean that a man wouldn't be integral to the process of learning your body. Learning what rocks your socks obviously is going to include partners for the vast majority of us at least much of the time. I didn't say that men should be excluded from this. I said that women need to learn their bodies and take some responsibility for their own pleasure. And in the context of RE's post:

I was brought up in a rather "feminist" culture, in the sense that female pleasure is what matters in sex, the man should be "sensitive" and his first priority should be what the woman wants.

Which is, unfortunately, a misunderstanding that I think does a lot of damage to boys who might feel pressure to be a skilled lover when they don't have any reasonable to be so. I think it's wonderful that there is know more focus on women's pleasure in sex and taking us off the ladder to PIV script because for most of our history, women's pleasure has been ignored and repressed. But I think it's really sad if some people are being socialized to think that means it's a man's responsibility know to look after female pleasure rather than something mutual that people learn- knowledge of yourself and openness to your lovers. The fact is that women's sexuality is more complicated and their orgasms are more complicated, so it's not so simple. Most boys learn to orgasm just by jacking off. Women are never going to be so mechanical en mass, and I think therefore, women should take the lead in learning about their bodies though of course that learning might include men and more experienced lovers, male or female, etc. And obviously this is what most people with good sex lives do in real life. I'm responding to how this messaging can get mixed up so that there are young men who get confused, as RE did, despite having what seem to be very good intentions.

And RE, I did not take your words to be an attack on feminism at all, especially since you put it in quotes. I took them to be a misunderstanding in messaging- and I'm not blaming you for that misunderstanding. I think it's pretty common among young men who want to not be misogynistic but were perhaps raised by people who took a well-intentioned but confused and damaging approach to egalitarianism, and I'm sorry if this contributed to your having given up on partnered sex, but if you are satisfied now, then good for you. There's a "I should be treated like a queen" response to patriarchy from some women that is understandable but harmful to both women and men, and unfortunately I think this has been misunderstood as feminism in popular culture. I think that this, combined with the post-hippie suburban interpretation of self-expression (you can do anything you want, just try hard and be yourself) advice combined with the good intentions of boys who want to get laid but don't want to be assholes but don't have great male role models has led to a lot of damaging messaging for young men and young women. It's a shame that some people fall back on misogyny and attack feminists for this, but I think it's also important for feminists to engage when there is real intention to self-reflect.

@106: That attitude definitely harms men as well, the sort of glossing over mental state and physiology and refusing to acknowledge inorgasmia being not a... problem exactly but as something that occurs. If you're bragging about always making someone come, and they don't, why is there a "fault" of a person? If you have always encountered this, are you really paying attention? Are you making the partner feel obliged to say yes out of duty, expectation or exhaustion?

What tension for such a personal, shared act.

@BiDanFan: If you're saying that some women require a team effort to learn about their sexual response, you'll get no argument from me. I was speaking to what I've directly observed, which is limited to the involvement of a single man.

I've been with women for whom oral was the most sure fire way to achieve orgasm, more so than even vibrators, and/or it was the first way they came. None of them had the flexibility or motivation to go down on their own muff.

In one case, she remained convinced I was wasting my time right up until about 1 minute before she came for the first time. I won't speculate about @EmmaLiz's reasoning, but I will point out that her statement is disdainful towards the experiences of me and some of my partners.

109: Abstractly, the people she was referring to who claim they can always achieve it in their partners every time causes a head-tilt and makes a person wonder how honest their partners were/are.

Personal anecdotes don't discount their life experience, their disdain comes from that and bragging harder doesn't change what they lived.

One more thought - I'd be an asshole not to credit women with teaching me some things about my body and mind. Although I knew I liked blow jobs long before I ever had one, my tastes have been greatly articulated and refined by the styles and techniques of some of my partners. There's no way I could have discovered just how powerful my orgasms could be alone. And I had no idea how good analingus felt until a certain woman took the initiative to show me. In more recent history, I've learned what kind of kink works for me and what my limits are from a sub with vastly more bdsm experience than I've had.

All of these wonderful sensations and lessons were most certainly given or taught to me by women. To say otherwise is just playing games with words, and as far as games go, it seems a rather peevish, standoffish, and grumpy game to play. Not unlike redefining "nice" to mean the opposite.

RE @102: Understood. I, too, took the wrong lesson from feminism after observing my mother's relationship with an abusive, controlling husband. That lesson was "always date weak men." Which, as you say, turned out to have disastrous results. Fortunately as I got older I realised the real lesson is "have egalitarian relationships." That's worked out much better. I think if you went back in with the approach of "it's important that we both enjoy ourselves" you'll have much better results.

WoofCandy @109 -- as someone who has only recently been able to come from oral and who still prefers a vibrator, I just want to note that this...
>> In one case, she remained convinced I was wasting my time right up until about 1 minute before she came for the first time. >>

...is indistinguishable (for those of us reading along at home) from this alternate version:
In one case, she finally accepted that you weren't going to take no for an answer and about a minute later faked a convincing orgasm.

I will credit men with sparking a lot of my understanding of what gets me hot. But figuring out what gets me to come has been 90% my own effort, over the course of my lifetime, of which 20% has been me trying to figure out creative ways to help a male partner feel involved in my orgasm.

@EmmaLiz: Thanks for the reply. You're obviously very thoughtful, and I really don't disagree with anything you've said.

If our perspectives diverge, perhaps it's is in your preoccupation with the negative, whether it's worrying about possible negative motivations or beliefs behind statements that could be more easily interpreted in a positive light, or focusing on the potential downsides of positive social expectations such as taking some responsibility for your lover's pleasure, or making the precarious leap from "I give her orgasms" to rape.

I certainly wouldn't dismiss the concerns you've raised. I'm skeptical, however, that it's possible to socially engineer unpleasant or unsatisfying experiences away from sex altogether (as Dan says, none of us gets everything we want out of a partner), especially if you're relying on statements that simply don't resonate with most people's experiences and fixating on the negatives instead of highlighting what works.

I applaud your desire to help men, but you will certainly do more harm than good if you don't take the views of real men as your starting point, including views that are in your opinion misguided. If you really are concerned about men, you'll likely need to look at other genres besides feminism (psychology, for example) to hear actual male voices. You would also need to let those voices in, something that may not be possible without re-examining some of your most cherished assumptions.

Fortunately, there are billions of options on this planet for people with different sets of priorities and tastes when it comes to sex and romance. The man who thinks it's his job to satisfy women may be a turn off to you, but he may also be the best thing that ever happened to another woman. The man who balks at pressure to perform may be a great husband, provider, and father for a woman who doesn't care all that much about his ability to make her come. And if my Tinder feed is any indication, there are plenty of women looking for "a real man" who fears God, drives a pickup, votes Republican, and presumably holds all kinds of "regressive" views about gender and sex. A thoughtful, fancy-pants, over-educated liberal like me would do nothing for her (even if I can rock a cowboy hat).

I definitely told men that I wasn't going to orgasm from their efforts and it stressed me out for them to try ... Not sure how many women were conveying similar messages

I've certainly heard that message.

When I was a young man exploring sex with young women, we'd talk about it and I'd convince them there was (truthfully) no pressure from me and where's the harm in trying. In those cases (luck of the draw, I guess), the relevant factors turned out to be psychological - self-fulfilling prophecy, difficulty relaxing, self-consciousness, lack of emotional intimacy with past partners.

As a wearied and grizzled man dating mature women, I accept it at face value.

BDF, I want to challenge you on your proposition @98 that PIV is the default "main course" for heterosex. That might be true (for some) to about the age of 50 or so for childless couples, and up to a decade or two later if the biologically female partner has given birth vaginally. After menopause the vaginal tissue atrophies - i.e., it shrinks and dries out. Postpartum vaginas have been sufficiently "stretched" by baby skulls that it's usually not as bad a problem, but if you are childless or gave birth via C-section and choose not take post-menopausal hormones, PIV can become quite painful for you and quite stressful for the biological man who still loves and desires you, but hates causing you pain. An hour's worth of foreplay and an entire tubeful of lube help some, but the pain is still there. It's not a great recipe for stimulating the libido, and forget about either partner reaching orgasm without considerable non-PIV stimulation before and after. Therefore, at least in my experience, PIV among post-menopausal-but-still-horny hetero couples tends to be the LAST item they select from the sexual menu, not the first.

Perhaps when a biologically female bisexual has sex with a straight or bisexual man, PIV is indeed the main and sometimes the only course. I wonder if your male-bodied partners could be assuming, or you are telling them, that your main reason for dating them is that you want real-PIV - since you can get all the other exciting choices with a woman partner, as you have described. (I'm told this is the reason that most lesbians avoid dating bisexual women - they are afraid that their partner will eventually leave them or cheat on them for real cock.) Has that been the case for you? Feel free to ignore the question if it is too personal, but I would ask you not to generalize from your own experience that all straight-ish people are enjoying PIV sex as their main course.

@EricaP: is indistinguishable (for those of us reading along at home) from this alternate version:

Although it's admittedly a stretch, perhaps there's at least one romantic out there reading this comment section who might instead have imagined a young couple, both entering a new and exciting phase of their lives, discovering each other in a new and exciting city, caught up in the warm and blissful honeymoon phase of a long relationship, foolish with hope and optimism, experiencing a connection unlike either of them had experienced before.

@EricaP: I should probably add that it took several attempts before it happened.

This is probably the wrong thing to say given the defensive climate that's settled in here, but I'm happy to hear to you managed to get there via oral.

Woof @115: Your experiences with women mirror mine. In my 20s, I briefly dated a woman who had never had an orgasm. I viewed this as a challenge -- of course, I did not succeed. In my 40s, I dated a woman who told me up front she couldn't come with a partner. I viewed this as useful information and was able to have mutually enjoyable sex with her, even though she got very close but didn't come. (This woman was in her 20s. By the time she reaches her 40s, will she have learned how to come with a partner? I think the odds are pretty good, but, like EricaP says, 90% of that is down to her.)

Woof @114: Amen. The thing that irked me so much about the whole penis discussion was so few people recognising that everyone's preferences are different; this ridiculous idea that there is somehow one Ideal Penis and everyone else's is just that little bit inferior. There is no Ideal Lover either, and any discussion of "what women want" does the disservice of assuming all women want the same thing (hi, Sportlandia) and discounting the fact that there are sizable minorities who want exactly the thing the majority doesn't.

I'd also note the difference between a man who wants to satisfy his lovers in order to stoke his own self-image as a Don Juan and one who wants to satisfy his lovers because he honestly cares about their pleasure, gets off on seeing them enjoy themselves, doesn't see orgasms as points to be scored. The former is more likely to have an idea in his head that "doing X will make women come," and not deviate from it even if the woman in question tells him she doesn't come that way, and thereby inspire women to fake orgasms just to bring the efforts to an end. The latter is the kind of lover we all want -- and we should all want to be.

BDF @120, yes, just wanted to add that I see coming with a partner as coming while in close intimate contact with a partner, and so giving myself an orgasm while my partner cuddles me (or hurts me in wonderfully fun ways) counts as "coming with a partner."

WoofCandy @119, did you notice that I said @113 that I still prefer a vibrator? Coming via oral is a convenient way to help my partner feel involved, but my own preference would be for my partner to tweak my nipples hard while I get off with the vibrator. Why would you be happy that I can manage to get off via oral, if that's not my preference?

@Capricornius (and anyone else who loves or is a menopausal or post-menopausal biological woman): I have been using a medicine called Estradiol, in 10 mg tablets that are vaginally inserted, and it really helps with the pain or discomfort that can accompany menopausal vaginal atrophy. It doesn't do much for lubrication, so if that is also a problem, you'll still need to use lube, but it brings back some elasticity and tissue engorgement and so piv (or whatever - in - v) is a lot more comfortable and fun. The drug is a low-level micro-dose of hormones, target-directed at the vagina and absorbed through the mucous membranes or tissues. You take it via pre-filled plastic vaginal suppository shooter-thing. It is a prescription medication, and might not be indicated for everyone, but it has changed my life.

I asked my gyno about something for this issue about a year-and-a-half ago, and she wrote me the prescription--she said she uses it herself. I don't know why she hadn't been the one to introduce the topic. I have several friends who have had to take penetrative sex off the table in recent years and not one of their gynecologists had ever mentioned this treatment or even asked if sex was getting uncomfortable or painful during the course of a routine annual visit. This burns me up, but that's not the point of my comment, so I won't digress. I will say that after I told my friends about my wonder-vagina pills, they asked their doctors, and were given prescriptions--and every one of them has said it has turned their sex lives back around.

My insurance pays for the generic, $30 for 18 tablets, which lasts me about 10 weeks, but two of my friends pay considerably more, and they have insurance which is supposedly covering it. (I'm American, so if you are from a more enlightened country, health-insurance-wise, ignore this part). My doctor had me start by using 1 tablet a day at bedtime for 2 weeks, to kind of get the tissue back up to speed, so to speak. After that point, she had me switch to 1 tablet every 3-4 days to maintain. Due to the not every-night-ness of the regimen, I sometimes forget, and so my actual use is more like every 4-5 or even 6 days, and I'm still good to go (though 6 days is pushing it, and if that happens twice in a row, I get breakthrough discomfort.

Anyway, this is an "ask your doctor if Vagifem or Yuvafem is right for you" thing.

And good luck!

@EricaP: Congrats on the change of orgasm status!
I love my vibrator, but when I started being able to orgasm without it, I really appreciated how I can have spontaneous sex that happens anywhere and pretty much count on being able to orgasm during it. It's very liberating; glad you got there.

@EricaP: It seems that our last posts crossed. I can't speak for WoofCandy, but I didn't mean to be dismissive of your preference for orgasm. When I congratulated you I assumed that you were happy to have added to your repertoire, not that one method of orgasm was or should be preferable to another.

Thanks for the info nocute. The Change happened for me late fifties so according to Capri's predictions I've still got a few more yrs till I dry up. Or give up, whichever comes first.

Nocute @123, thanks for your personal testimony regarding Estradiol. I'm glad it worked for you, and your recommendation may help many other post-menopausal women and their partners get their PIV groove back. Unfortunately, even when applied topically to the interior of the vagina in very low dosages, it does allow additional estrogen to enter your bloodstream - and if you are someone who experiences severe hormonal flux and/or various unwelcome and potentially dangerous side effects from supplemental estrogen at any dose, such products are obviously contraindicated. That's where my spouse and I are at.

We tried the vaginal Estradiol under close medical monitoring, and it actually did seem to ease a lot of the discomfort during and following PIV sex. But after a few weeks some side effects started kicking in, and shortly thereafter the doc recommended that we stop the treatment entirely. (It was not an unexpected result, since birth control pills had already proved to be a disastrous and extremely short-lived experiment earlier in our marriage. With hormone dosing, as with everything else in one's sex life and the physical shell that allows one to have a sex life, YMMV.)

But, ya know, we are really not suffering by having PIV as an occasional side dish rather than our sexual main course. Specifically, post-menopausal PIV can be much like a souffle: it's yummy of course, but it requires a lot of advance preparation, it doesn't always turn out the way you had hoped even when you follow the recipe that worked last time, and quite often you end up deciding that you just aren't up to making a souffle today, so you choose an easier dish instead. We are still very much in love and our sexual menu remains quite varied, delightful, and dare I say nutritious - but yeah, we don't cook a lot of souffles these days.

WoofCandy @118

I'll just say that this representation:

>> she remained convinced I was wasting my time right up until about 1 minute before she came for the first time>>

Doesn't sound much like this one:
>> foolish with hope and optimism, experiencing a connection unlike either of them had experienced before >>

The first woman sounds frankly skeptical, not optimistic.

nocutename @125, thanks.

For me, oral is not more convenient than a vibrator, because it adds a level of stress and self-recriminations for (feeling that I'm) taking too long. With regard to spontaneous sex, what I like is getting it served with a side of sexy pain -- a fun, non-stressful add-on, the opposite of my orgasm.

@nocutename: I suspect EricaP's post to me was a polite way of saying "I don't like you, please fuck off."

@EricaP: If I've gotten that wrong, I was happy because I like you, and I assumed that finding a new way to orgasm would be a happy thing for you. I apologize for having overlooked the negative ramifications of adding a disappointing option to the mix. I feel the same way about hand jobs and condoms.

Cap @117: Ha. My male partners are all too aware of my chronic failure to ever have any female partners. So your conjecture is wrong. Sex with my male partners includes all the menu items, thanks. But thanks for the warning; as a child-free person who's never had sex (yet) with anyone over 50, I'm glad to know my preferred means of orgasm (oral sex) isn't the one that's going to find itself off the menu.

BDF @131 - Someday your princess will come! (In all senses of the term)

I have nothing against you, WoofCandy, and if I want to tell someone to fuck off I'm able to do that directly.

Rather: as a lifelong representative of the love-blowjobs-but-not-interested-in-the-pressure-to-come-from-oral group, I didn't want my change in status to be misinterpreted. Yes, I can now (sometimes) come from oral. But all the other reasons I didn't appreciate people trying before are still in place. Primarily -- it distracts sex partners from hurting me, which is what I really like.

Do people really pressure you to endure handjobs with a condom on? That does sound unpleasant.

Actually Capri, if a man did feel as if he were competing against women to keep a woman's attention, I think he'd focus on doing what a woman can do better than she can do it. Don't you? (Bi women choose men over lesbians primarily because of heteronormativity, rather than because of dick. Think about it: A lesbian can have a dick any size her partner wants, that's always hard, and lasts as long as her partner wants to and no longer. How could a biological cock compete with that?)

You assumed that all, or most, straight-ish people engage in bum-fingering without asking, which was inaccurate. So there's that.

I think that men generally -- and I do have a large sample size -- focus on PIV for a mix of reasons: one, it seems to be the act that allows them to get off most reliably; two, it's what they think women want (I've spoken to a few partners who talked about feeling pressure to manfully ravish a woman, which Sportlandia has experienced too); three, it's mechanically easier than going down on a woman for as long as WoofCandy has done, if her coming is the goal; and four, it's the least-effort way to generate a male orgasm from the woman's point of view, so may be an easier ask than "will you give me a blowjob/handjob". It's also the only act with the potential -- depending on the people involved -- for simultaneous orgasms, which are pretty awesome.

If all a woman wanted was PIV, she wouldn't be bisexual in the first place.

@EricaP: The first woman sounds frankly skeptical, not optimistic.

Only if you reduce her entire outlook on life down to her ability to have an orgasm, and even then there was a hint of optimism in her willingness to try, and, I suppose, in the fact that it ultimately worked.

Do people really pressure you to endure handjobs with a condom on?

Lol. If they did, I might go along with it out of a sense of gentlemanly obligation (wouldn't be the first time I've powered through boring sex to avoid hurting someone's feelings), but at my age, that sad encounter would be our last.

Is all this pressure from your partners somehow tied up with D/s, or are they just assholes? Can't you just say "no thanks, I'm good", and if they insist, just pick up your phone and check Facebook while they're down there?

@WoofCandy

>> she remained convinced I was wasting my time right up until about 1 minute before she came for the first time>>

If she enjoyed the sensations for their own sake, would she have felt you were wasting your time down there? (I love going down on a guy because I love feeling cock in my mouth and I believe they like the feeling, not because either of us expects him to come that way. A hard cock in my mouth is never a waste of time, regardless of orgasm!) The fact that she felt you were wasting your time gives me the impression she didn't love the experience -- and you knew she didn't love the experience, but continued anyway to show her she could come that way.

So, no, it's not always simple to say:
>> "no thanks, I'm good" >>

Or:
>> "no thanks, I'd rather you licked my ass while I used my vibrator" >>

Or even my usual:
>> "no thanks, I'd rather we fuck and then I use my vibrator" >>

If you haven't experienced a lot of pressure in your sexual relationships, I'm happy for you.

Woof @135, I nearly fell off my chair laughing with the mental image of someone absent-mindedly checking Facebook while their partner is energetically going down on them. It would certainly get the message across.

BDF @134, what I said @117 was that I wondered if MEN might assume the reason a bisexual woman chose them was for cock, and lesbian friends have told me they avoid getting involved with bisexual women due to the same assumption. You're describing the situation from the other point of view, namely how a bisexual woman ACTUALLY feels about having sex with men vs, women, as opposed to her partners' mistaken assumptions. The thing that you said that was new and surprising to me was that for you, real cock vs. simulated cock is a non-issue, and in fact you find simulated to be superior. My experience with dildoes is that they get the job done, but it sure doesn't feel the same as the real deal. Hmmm, maybe I need to splurge on a better quality of product.

No, I do not think most men would say, "Hunh! She thinks she gets good head from a woman - just wait until she sees what my magical tongue can do! She'll never want a woman again!" What SOME men think (I think), or at least fantasize, is that they possess the sexual super-power to fuck a lesbian or bi woman straight. I think (I hope) that notion is becoming obsolete and unacceptable, as more and more people accept the fact that homosexual preference is just as immutable as one's skin tone or eye color. But it's an attitude that's still out there, in the real world as well as in erotica and porn.

Yes, I was very surprised to learn a few months ago in this forum that gentle ass play (not poking or jabbing deeply in, just stroking and caresses across and around the rim) is not part of everyone's standard "vanilla" repertoire. I've always been delighted by the sensation when someone does it to me, and everyone I've touched that way has encouraged me to continue. But the strong pushback from the SL community showed me that the people who don't like it, REALLY don't like it (at least not without advance warning and permission). I guess I have been very lucky in picking partners who happen to enjoy it as much as I do.

I totally agree with you that simultaneous orgasm can be mindblowingly awesome, and it is easiest to achieve through PIV sex. That is something I have definitely missed since my spouse and I stopped cooking so many souffles together.

Cap @138: My comparison of dildoes to penises was a bit tongue-in-cheek, designed to take a bit of wind out of the sails of men who feel their penises make them superior. In honesty, I rarely use dildoes with cis women. Precisely because if we want dick, we can get a dude whenever we want. (I would assume women who never sleep with men would use them more often.) I agree they feel different. I think that temperature plays a factor there.

Sadly, I've heard of men who try to "cure" lesbians with "corrective rape." Not only horrible, but misguided, as being raped makes even gals who love cock wary of men :( Those sorts of men, I feel, would be less interested in "fucking a bi woman straight," but rather see her as no more than half of his threesome fantasy. (Because yeah, we all have plenty of hot female FWBs just standing by, desperate for misogynist cock. If we did, we wouldn't even be talking to you, asshole.)

Lesbians, and bi woman, say "she left me for cock" as a shorthand, because what *tangible* thing can a guy offer that we can't? It's not the tangible thing, though. It's the heteronormative relationship, it's the fact that guys are so much easier to pull, it's the fact that while you were trying to figure out how or whether to approach that lady four guys did all the work and hit on you, it's the fact that we are socialised to neither do the approaching nor the saying of no. Women get rejected more often because we're easier to reject, oh she'll understand. Having a same-sex relationship is still an act of rebellion, and most choose conformity. My newest former lover who chose to be monogamous with a dude, it was proximity (she was long distance from me), commitment, old-fashioned romanticism, a marriage proposal that he could offer that I couldn't. It's not the literal penis, it's everything the penis stands for.

I admire your resilience you guys. Gone are the days when four hundred comments occurred. This system is torture.

When we say "she chose dick over me," we are literally dehumanising the winning rival. It's easier than having to face that he had other things to offer that we couldn't. On a gender level or an individual level. The One Who Got Away (tm) did not literally choose dick over me, she chose to be monogamous with someone she had loved for years, been through many hard times with, considered her soulmate. Hurts a lot less to just say "she chose dick."

LavaGirl "This system is torture"

Agreed. It's really awful.

BDF @139 @141 - You've used the term "heteronormative" before, and I've generally thought, "Yeah, well of course we live in a heteronormative culture. You just have to make up your mind to ignore it and go your own way, if you want something different." You've also complained about how hard it is for you to find women to date. But I never saw those two ideas as being linked to one another. I did not ever think, before today, about how pervasively our heteronormative culture can limit the opportunities for a bisexual looking for lasting relationships with women, when lesbians seeking long-term partners are culturally conditioned to view bisexuals with prejudice and suspicion - and the available bi women are more likely to "choose dick" (you're right - the very phrase is dehumanizing) and all that goes with it over a relationship with another bi female, for the many reasons you so eloquently stated. Thank you for being willing to reveal some of your personal history and vulnerability around this issue in order to educate me and others. I'm pretty sure my lesbian friends read SL regularly, so maybe they've learned something from you today, too.

Lava @140 and Erica @142, if you think reading a trickled-down SL column commentary is torture, here's a rather bizarre item to spice up your afternoon (or tomorrow morning, for Lava):

https://www.outsideonline.com/1902036/ki…

You're welcome!

Cap @143: Wow! A breakthrough :) Glad I've been able to enlighten you to the reality of life from another perspective! Yes, in fewer words, heteronormativity is the very reason it's so hard for bi women to date women. Everything is stacked in favour of opposite-sex relationships and against same-sex ones. So if you could enjoy either, which do you think you'll mostly end up in, by default? (That and of course math!)

Anyway! To end on a happy note, I have been on two OKCupid dates with a woman (like her, not sure I'm attracted to her though) and have invited a bi poly friend (who I am attracted to) over for dinner tomorrow. Fingers (mmm, fingers) crossed! :D